The original virus is communism

Communism is a fanatical ideology, claiming to be the best political system in history, its ultimate fulfilment.

That, however, is demonstrably not the case. Other than murdering more people than any other political system in history, enslaving the rest and creating universal penury, communism has failed in every other endeavour.

To be able to continue making their megalomaniac, self-legitimising claims, communists have to lie. Hence lies aren’t an unfortunate by-product of communism but its very essence.

Communists lie to their own people, they lie to the world, and they lie about everything – even including natural disasters.

Thus, only after I left the Soviet Union in 1973 did I find out about the 7.3-magnitude earthquake that levelled the Turkmen city of Ashgabat in 1948. Of the city’s 198,000 inhabitants, 110,000 died. Yet the tragedy was never reported.

The same goes ten-fold for man-made disasters. Thus, according to the Soviets, no Aeroflot plane ever fell out of the sky – at a time when the airline had the worst safety record in the world, a leadership position it still hasn’t relinquished. As to hushing up and vehemently denying nuclear accidents, I wrote about that the other day.

Lest you might think the Soviet communists held exclusive rights to institutional lies, Chinese communists can match them with room to spare.

For example, Mao’s China denied the scale, indeed the existence, of the famine caused by the 1958-1962 Great Leap Forward. Yet 45 million died and about as many births were postponed, qualifying the famine as the greatest such calamity in history.

Ostensibly, China has changed since then. The Chinese now export things other than AK knock-offs to terrorists. Private enterprise is allowed, albeit under the government’s watchful eye. Most people are still poor, but at least they aren’t dying en masse. Wealthy Chinese tourists are seen around the world toting Gucci bags, rather than Red Books.

But the most important aspect hasn’t changed. China is still a communist, which is to say evil, state. That means the government still stamps out any dissent, suppresses free speech, controls even the intimate-most parts of people’s lives. And it still lies.

It’s only in this context that the coronavirus pandemic can be understood. Its immediate cause is Covid-19. Its real cause is the deadly virus of communism, with barefaced lies as its ubiquitous symptom.

At present, the Chinese communists lie about the scale and virulence of the infection, claiming they have it under control. That lie is neither sweet nor little, for it misinforms health authorities the world over, leading them to wrong conclusions and belated measures.

According to the communists, only 3,300 have died in China, one third the number of deaths in Italy. Yet Wuhan locals know the virus killed 42,000 in that city alone.

The Chinese already knew in early December about a “new viral outbreak”, driving up the number of pneumonia cases and clearly transmitting from human to human. Yet only on New Year’s eve did they notify the WHO about “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”.

Even then they insisted indignantly that no human to human transmission was occurring or indeed possible. The WHO obligingly acquiesced, accepting the lie on face value: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence…” and so forth – this, after some six weeks into the pandemic.

In fact, the aetiology of the problem was known from the start, at least to Dr Li Wenliang, who was already treating multiple cases in December. As a result of his heroic efforts, he was arrested by the secret police, accused of “spreading rumours” and made to sign a recantation.

Eventually Dr Li Wenliang contracted the virus and died, tending to his stricken patients until his last breath. 

When the pandemic was no longer possible to deny, the Chinese Foreign Ministry tried a new lie. Yes, it acknowledged, an epidemic was indeed under way. But it was created by the US military as an act of sabotage against the best possible political system.

In the time it took the Chinese communists to acknowledge the problem, tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands travelled to and from Wuhan, spreading the infection all over China and eventually the world.

But for the communists’ lies, the problem could have been nipped in the bud, and lives could have been saved – along with the world’s economies. As it is, we are looking at conceivably the worst recession since 1929.

What will the British government learn from the communist aetiology of coronavirus? Precisely nothing.

The moment our house arrest is lifted and loo paper again becomes available, we’ll reopen the valve on the pipeline carrying cheap Chinese goods into the UK. More important, we’ll stand by our decision to buy 5G technology from Huawei, a company that is de facto, though not de jure, owned by the communist government.

Our American allies are understandably nervous about this arrangement, what with its far-reaching strategic implications. The communists will be able to use this arrangement to compromise sensitive intelligence information and, push come to shove, scramble our communications.

But Huawei is cheaper than Nokia, and what else can possibly matter? Our powers that be refuse to accept that communist China (along with the KGB-run Russia) is our deadly enemy.

It’s in our vital interest to keep China at arm’s length, limiting trade to a bare minimum or, better still, cutting it off altogether. However, our government doesn’t think in those terms.

Smartphones costing people a few pounds more may cost our governing spivs the next election, and that’s not the risk they are prepared to take. However, risking people’s lives and the country’s security is perfectly acceptable. First things first.